Ever been in a Chinese supermarket surrounded by shelves of Chinese vinegar and had no idea what the differences are or which one to buy? Well, don't fret, because what follows is a guide to Chinese vinegars, how they differ, and what they are normally used for.
Zhenjiang vinegar, also known as Chinkiang vinegar, is the most well-known Chinese vinegar and also the most commonly found outside of China. As you can guess from the name, it originates from Zhenjiang in southeast China's Jiangsu Province and reportedly has a history of over 1,400 years.
Zhenjiang vinegar's main ingredient is generally glutinous rice, although wheat, barley and other grains are also added. It has a mellow, fragrant taste and is sweeter than white or red vinegar. This vinegar is generally used to make make cold dishes (凉拌菜 liáng bàn cài), or dipping sauces for things like dumplings.
One of the most famous brands of Zhenjiang vinegar is Hengshun (恒顺 Héngshùn). It’s won numerous brand awards in China over the years, so it's a pretty safe bet to buy when choosing a vinegar.
Hailing from north China's Shanxi Province, this is the other major type of black vinegar that’s used in Chinese cooking. Unlike Zhenjiang vinegar, Shanxi vinegar is made from sorghum instead of rice, with other grains like wheat, barley, bran, and peas added to the mix.
Shanxi vinegar is aged for at least a year, and the ones you’ll normally find in a shop will have been aged for three years. This aging gives the vinegar a stronger flavor than Zhenjiang vinegar, and lends it more deep sour notes. The strong flavor of Shanxi vinegar means that is often used in braised dishes (红烧菜 hóng shāo cài) as well as some cold dishes where a stronger sour flavor is desired. For those who just love that strong vinegar flavor, this can also be the preferred choice for dumpling dipping.
The most commonly found brand of Shanxi vinegar is probably Shuita (水塔 Shuǐtǎ), which does a few different varieties, such as one that has been aged for ten years.
This vinegar is the most similar to Western vinegars in flavor and probably comes closest in flavor to apple cider vinegar, although it’s less strong and doesn’t have the fruity undertones. It’s made from fermented rice, and ranges from clear to pale yellow in color.
White rice vinegar is usually used for making Chinese pickles (跳水泡菜 tiàoshuǐ pàocài) because its clear color doesn’t affect the food. It’s also often used in Cantonese-style sweet and sour dishes.
Lastly, we have dumpling vinegar, which, as you’ve probably guessed, is used for dipping dumplings. Dumpling vinegar can vary a lot depending on brand, however generally it’s either made from Zhenjiang vinegar or Shanxi vinegar, with garlic, salt (or sometimes soy sauce) added in. Some brands also add other flavors such as ginger.
Do you have a preferred type of Chinese vinegar? Let us know in the comments below.
READ: Where To Find a Classic French Quiche in the Capital
Ever been in a Chinese supermarket surrounded by shelves of Chinese vinegar(quote)
Sounds like a tale of ethnic violence. The Bai Mi Cu Rebellion or some such.
In one account I read of the Taiping Rebellion, in Zhenjiang, where I was living at the time, it was stated that corpses so filled the canal that people crossed the canal walking on the rotting corpses that filled the canal. I used to ponder that every time I took the bus downtown and crossed the canal.
What did you ponder? The corpse walk itself? Filling the canal with fresh cadavers? Both?
Hey! That's a misintentional high-coo, like what the Japanee write. Them and creepy art-major chicks in college.
Ponder the imagery/Imagine the canal/Littered with corpses
Actually almost no haiku in English fit any meter. Somebody vapes their hash oil, mutters a couple of sentences, then splits that up into three lines and, Viola! Instant haiku on toast!
I'll brand haiku on yer backside in cuneiform script and use rusty irons if the whim overtakes me. I am the Grand Master of Haiku Hapkido.
THe world is just a branding iron/ The world is just a branding iron/ And ow! And ow!
[/quote]There's a Monty Pythong skit in here somewhere. I am checking the underpants now.
"Nobody expects the Haiku Inquisition!" mebbe.
10 AUG. '22: FBI, KGB---two spoonsful from the same toxic bowl of alphabet soup.
Ever been in a Chinese supermarket surrounded by shelves of Chinese vinegar(quote)
Sounds like a tale of ethnic violence. The Bai Mi Cu Rebellion or some such.
In one account I read of the Taiping Rebellion, in Zhenjiang, where I was living at the time, it was stated that corpses so filled the canal that people crossed the canal walking on the rotting corpses that filled the canal. I used to ponder that every time I took the bus downtown and crossed the canal.
What did you ponder? The corpse walk itself? Filling the canal with fresh cadavers? Both?
Hey! That's a misintentional high-coo, like what the Japanee write. Them and creepy art-major chicks in college.
Ponder the imagery/Imagine the canal/Littered with corpses
Actually almost no haiku in English fit any meter. Somebody vapes their hash oil, mutters a couple of sentences, then splits that up into three lines and, Viola! Instant haiku on toast!
I'll brand haiku on yer backside in cuneiform script and use rusty irons if the whim overtakes me. I am the Grand Master of Haiku Hapkido.
THe world is just a branding iron/ The world is just a branding iron/ And ow! And ow!
[/quote]There's a Monty Pythong skit in here somewhere. I am checking the underpants now.
Ever been in a Chinese supermarket surrounded by shelves of Chinese vinegar(quote)
Sounds like a tale of ethnic violence. The Bai Mi Cu Rebellion or some such.
In one account I read of the Taiping Rebellion, in Zhenjiang, where I was living at the time, it was stated that corpses so filled the canal that people crossed the canal walking on the rotting corpses that filled the canal. I used to ponder that every time I took the bus downtown and crossed the canal.
What did you ponder? The corpse walk itself? Filling the canal with fresh cadavers? Both?
Hey! That's a misintentional high-coo, like what the Japanee write. Them and creepy art-major chicks in college.
Ponder the imagery/Imagine the canal/Littered with corpses
Actually almost no haiku in English fit any meter. Somebody vapes their hash oil, mutters a couple of sentences, then splits that up into three lines and, Viola! Instant haiku on toast!
I'll brand haiku on yer backside in cuneiform script and use rusty irons if the whim overtakes me. I am the Grand Master of Haiku Hapkido.
THe world is just a branding iron/ The world is just a branding iron/ And ow! And ow!
10 AUG. '22: FBI, KGB---two spoonsful from the same toxic bowl of alphabet soup.
Ever been in a Chinese supermarket surrounded by shelves of Chinese vinegar(quote)
Sounds like a tale of ethnic violence. The Bai Mi Cu Rebellion or some such.
In one account I read of the Taiping Rebellion, in Zhenjiang, where I was living at the time, it was stated that corpses so filled the canal that people crossed the canal walking on the rotting corpses that filled the canal. I used to ponder that every time I took the bus downtown and crossed the canal.
What did you ponder? The corpse walk itself? Filling the canal with fresh cadavers? Both?
Hey! That's a misintentional high-coo, like what the Japanee write. Them and creepy art-major chicks in college.
Ponder the imagery/Imagine the canal/Littered with corpses
Actually almost no haiku in English fit any meter. Somebody vapes their hash oil, mutters a couple of sentences, then splits that up into three lines and, Viola! Instant haiku on toast!
Ever been in a Chinese supermarket surrounded by shelves of Chinese vinegar(quote)
Sounds like a tale of ethnic violence. The Bai Mi Cu Rebellion or some such.
In one account I read of the Taiping Rebellion, in Zhenjiang, where I was living at the time, it was stated that corpses so filled the canal that people crossed the canal walking on the rotting corpses that filled the canal. I used to ponder that every time I took the bus downtown and crossed the canal.
What did you ponder? The corpse walk itself? Filling the canal with fresh cadavers? Both?
Hey! That's a misintentional high-coo, like what the Japanee write. Them and creepy art-major chicks in college.
Ponder the imagery/Imagine the canal/Littered with corpses
Actually almost no haiku in English fit any meter. Somebody vapes their hash oil, mutters a couple of sentences, then splits that up into three lines and, Viola! Instant haiku on toast!
10 AUG. '22: FBI, KGB---two spoonsful from the same toxic bowl of alphabet soup.
Ever been in a Chinese supermarket surrounded by shelves of Chinese vinegar(quote)
Sounds like a tale of ethnic violence. The Bai Mi Cu Rebellion or some such.
In one account I read of the Taiping Rebellion, in Zhenjiang, where I was living at the time, it was stated that corpses so filled the canal that people crossed the canal walking on the rotting corpses that filled the canal. I used to ponder that every time I took the bus downtown and crossed the canal.
What did you ponder? The corpse walk itself? Filling the canal with fresh cadavers? Both?
Hey! That's a misintentional high-coo, like what the Japanee write. Them and creepy art-major chicks in college.
Ponder the imagery/Imagine the canal/Littered with corpses
Ever been in a Chinese supermarket surrounded by shelves of Chinese vinegar(quote)
Sounds like a tale of ethnic violence. The Bai Mi Cu Rebellion or some such.
In one account I read of the Taiping Rebellion, in Zhenjiang, where I was living at the time, it was stated that corpses so filled the canal that people crossed the canal walking on the rotting corpses that filled the canal. I used to ponder that every time I took the bus downtown and crossed the canal.
What did you ponder? The corpse walk itself? Filling the canal with fresh cadavers? Both?
Hey! That's a misintentional high-coo, like what the Japanee write. Them and creepy art-major chicks in college.
Ponder the imagery/Imagine the canal/Littered with corpses
10 AUG. '22: FBI, KGB---two spoonsful from the same toxic bowl of alphabet soup.
Ever been in a Chinese supermarket surrounded by shelves of Chinese vinegar(quote)
Sounds like a tale of ethnic violence. The Bai Mi Cu Rebellion or some such.
In one account I read of the Taiping Rebellion, in Zhenjiang, where I was living at the time, it was stated that corpses so filled the canal that people crossed the canal walking on the rotting corpses that filled the canal. I used to ponder that every time I took the bus downtown and crossed the canal.
What did you ponder? The corpse walk itself? Filling the canal with fresh cadavers? Both?
Ever been in a Chinese supermarket surrounded by shelves of Chinese vinegar(quote)
Sounds like a tale of ethnic violence. The Bai Mi Cu Rebellion or some such.
In one account I read of the Taiping Rebellion, in Zhenjiang, where I was living at the time, it was stated that corpses so filled the canal that people crossed the canal walking on the rotting corpses that filled the canal. I used to ponder that every time I took the bus downtown and crossed the canal.
It'd be like walking on tightly-packed garbage sacks with sticks (bones) among the soft parts. You'd tend to sink in. Not to mention the convulsive puking the smell induces. As literature, not bad; as history, fanciful. The canal may well have been corpse packed. No one was skipping the bridge to walk on dead folks.
Well I wasn't there myself to witness, but I can readily imagine all bridges blasted to smitheroons (war and all) and a person needing to go A to B, hence a little sloppy foot and miasma ain't no big deal when xiao liu is a waiting for ya with her eager beaver.
Ever been in a Chinese supermarket surrounded by shelves of Chinese vinegar(quote)
Sounds like a tale of ethnic violence. The Bai Mi Cu Rebellion or some such.
In one account I read of the Taiping Rebellion, in Zhenjiang, where I was living at the time, it was stated that corpses so filled the canal that people crossed the canal walking on the rotting corpses that filled the canal. I used to ponder that every time I took the bus downtown and crossed the canal.
What did you ponder? The corpse walk itself? Filling the canal with fresh cadavers? Both?
10 AUG. '22: FBI, KGB---two spoonsful from the same toxic bowl of alphabet soup.
Ever been in a Chinese supermarket surrounded by shelves of Chinese vinegar(quote)
Sounds like a tale of ethnic violence. The Bai Mi Cu Rebellion or some such.
In one account I read of the Taiping Rebellion, in Zhenjiang, where I was living at the time, it was stated that corpses so filled the canal that people crossed the canal walking on the rotting corpses that filled the canal. I used to ponder that every time I took the bus downtown and crossed the canal.
It'd be like walking on tightly-packed garbage sacks with sticks (bones) among the soft parts. You'd tend to sink in. Not to mention the convulsive puking the smell induces. As literature, not bad; as history, fanciful. The canal may well have been corpse packed. No one was skipping the bridge to walk on dead folks.
10 AUG. '22: FBI, KGB---two spoonsful from the same toxic bowl of alphabet soup.
Ever been in a Chinese supermarket surrounded by shelves of Chinese vinegar(quote)
Sounds like a tale of ethnic violence. The Bai Mi Cu Rebellion or some such.
In one account I read of the Taiping Rebellion, in Zhenjiang, where I was living at the time, it was stated that corpses so filled the canal that people crossed the canal walking on the rotting corpses that filled the canal. I used to ponder that every time I took the bus downtown and crossed the canal.
Ever been in a Chinese supermarket surrounded by shelves of Chinese vinegar(quote)
Sounds like a tale of ethnic violence. The Bai Mi Cu Rebellion or some such.
Ya take 250 ml 9度醋，mince up three cloves of garlic. 起床后第一件事， Gargle and swallow. Aint no werewolves, vampireens, ... not nobody， gonna mess wi you.
Ever been in a Chinese supermarket surrounded by shelves of Chinese vinegar(quote)
Sounds like a tale of ethnic violence. The Bai Mi Cu Rebellion or some such.
10 AUG. '22: FBI, KGB---two spoonsful from the same toxic bowl of alphabet soup.